I know this topic is one that we have little information on and there is quite a bit of speculation of what exactly does "cyber attack" constitute. I've been reading "Dark Territory" by Fred Kaplan, (a good read which I recommend) at the behest of my BC for OPD. To frame this, the book is about the history of cyber warfare with the US and how we've used it to leverage advantages against others and how it's been leveraged against us. Overall, it's quite fascinating.

More to the point of the subject...One part of the book talks about cyber/information attacks against the Russians and how we had the capability during the cold war to sow disinformation into their networks, ie. false orders, intel, etc. In regards to the F-35, I wonder if this what they mean by the APG-81's capability to perform cyber attack. Imagine if an F-35 had the capability to pass false information into the link-16 equivalent of adversary aircraft, which would then propagate throughout the network. If we (hypothetically) had the ability to penetrate the enemy's equivalent of their link-16, we could generate false targets, strike packages, etc. This would be far more effective than spoofing radar returns through ECM.

What do you guys think?

Last edited by kimjongnumbaun on 29 Nov 2017, 12:56, edited 1 time in total.

I think there's a reason that cyber is arguably the most secretive area of military operations these days.

While I don't know how accurate Zero Days was, Nitro Zeus sounded like a real kicker, and Suter (made by the same company that made the F-35's EW / cyber suite) sounds interesting as well, particularly the claims in regards to Operation Orchard.

Dragon029 wrote:I think there's a reason that cyber is arguably the most secretive area of military operations these days.

While I don't know how accurate Zero Days was, Nitro Zeus sounded like a real kicker, and Suter (made by the same company that made the F-35's EW / cyber suite) sounds interesting as well, particularly the claims in regards to Operation Orchard.

—John A. Tirpak9/22/2014The Air Force’s space and cyber capabilities in combat are so lethal that it’s not safe to practice with them in wargames, said Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mike Hostage. Speaking at AFA's Air & Space Conference last week, Hostage told reporters he has to limit the role played by space and cyber forces during exercises. If they were allowed to play for the whole drill, “somebody’s going to get hurt,” Hostage said. “They are so effective that they would negate the red air’s ability to do much of anything” in a Red Flag-type exercise, “and we wouldn’t get the air training that we’re spending a lot of money to get.” Unleashed, cyber warriors can “blind the adversary, … make them run together,” and reduce the number of enemies the physical forces have to fight. His push toward more simulated Red Flag-type wargames will “let the aviators learn the impact, the strength of what (space and cyber) can do,” he said.Recent News

—John A. Tirpak9/22/2014The Air Force’s space and cyber capabilities in combat are so lethal that it’s not safe to practice with them in wargames, said Air Combat Command chief Gen. Mike Hostage. Speaking at AFA's Air & Space Conference last week, Hostage told reporters he has to limit the role played by space and cyber forces during exercises. If they were allowed to play for the whole drill, “somebody’s going to get hurt,” Hostage said. “They are so effective that they would negate the red air’s ability to do much of anything” in a Red Flag-type exercise, “and we wouldn’t get the air training that we’re spending a lot of money to get.” Unleashed, cyber warriors can “blind the adversary, … make them run together,” and reduce the number of enemies the physical forces have to fight. His push toward more simulated Red Flag-type wargames will “let the aviators learn the impact, the strength of what (space and cyber) can do,” he said.Recent News

Here is an excerpt from the book. I really had never imagined capabilities of this nature or the creativeness of the team.

Pretty scary stuff. As much as we talk about the F-35's revolutionary capabilities we still usually refer to it's kinetic abilities. Cyber is still kind of nebulous to most of us, not involved in the field. We can only pray the United States is on top of the field, in both offensive, and defensive warfare. We commonly hear that the U.S. is rated 1st, followed by Israel, Russia, China, and Iran, with NK having significant capabilities.

I don't know where that leaves our NATO allies, or Japan? The problem is that we won't know for sure who's cyber warfare technology is most effective until the shooting starts. If our assumptions are wrong we could end up with some serious upsets. A war almost never goes according to plan. Almost nothing about WWII went according to prewar doctrinal thinking. Cyber warfare could be a complete wildcard.

Interesting how current thinking is reflected in Sci-fi. In the "Battlestar Galactica" remake in the early 2,000s, the Cylons defeated the Colonials though a cyber attack. They had their pawn put a back door in the Colonials navigational software program. They used it to shutdown the whole Colonial defense network. Vipers dead in space, warships defenseless, whole planets helpless. We can only pray that nothing that crippling ever happens to us, in the real world.

Along the lines of the historical context you reference here, and looking at cyber versus his summary basically on spectrum EW, ...I can say that I was already working with offensive and defensive techniques in the cyber realm(trojans/microwave links etc.) at US Space Command over 25 years ago, when we were also Alpha testing OS2 LM/Windows 3.1/NT at the very infancy of the internet. It was "a thing" back when I personally owned an entire Class C IP block. (who'd a thunk the net would get over 4 billion devices.. not us then )

Along the lines of the historical context you reference here, and looking at cyber versus his summary basically on spectrum EW, ...I can say that I was already working with offensive and defensive techniques in the cyber realm(trojans/microwave links etc.) at US Space Command over 25 years ago, when we were also Alpha testing OS2 LM/Windows 3.1/NT at the very infancy of the internet. It was "a thing" back when I personally owned an entire Class C IP block. (who'd a thunk the net would get over 4 billion devices.. not us then )